Route reliability record
ORD→AVL
Chicago to Asheville
- Flights
- 1,400
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 536 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,400 ORD to AVL flights, of which Envoy Air flew 621 at 81.4% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to AVL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.0%, against 75.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,368 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.4% on time across 621 flights
These figures cover 1,400 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to AVL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 81.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 70.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 740 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 621 | 81.4% | 49 min | 2.25% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 38 | 70.3% | 81 min | 2.63% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 740 | 70.1% | 67 min | 2.30% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 33 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy leads SkyWest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Asheville
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → AVLChicago to Asheville | Envoy Air | 79.6% | 81.4% | 2.25% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. ORD → GSPChicago to Greer | Envoy Air | 74.1% | 76.7% | 3.34% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 3. ORD → AVLChicago to Asheville | SkyWest Airlines | 68.5% | 70.1% | 2.30% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. ORD → GSPChicago to Greer | SkyWest Airlines | 67.2% | 69.7% | 3.60% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am178 flights82.8%
- 8am–11am387 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm54 flights65.4%
- 2pm–5pm440 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm340 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 83.8% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 440 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 60.0% on time, against 83.5% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 195 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,897 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 536 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 1,398 flights, 3 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,400 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in AVL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 83.5% on time and December 60.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,368 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to AVL questions
How often is ORD to AVL delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.9% of the 1,400 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to AVL?
Envoy Air leads at 81.4% on time across 621 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 70.1%, a gap of 11 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to AVL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.3%, 21 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on ORD to AVL?
December is the weakest month at 60.0% on time, compared with 83.5% in October. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- AVL to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to AVL81.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to AVL70.1%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- ATL to AVL, a related route84.8%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.1%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to AVL and AVL to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to AVL’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.